After another school shooting, US contemplates one last response to its gun crisis: giving up

COMMENT

All these years, we assumed the gun nuts of America were immovable. Wrongly, it transpires. This week’s mass shooting at a primary school in Tennessee inspired something so many past horrors could not: at last, a shift in stance.

Sadly, that shift was in the wrong direction.

Having failed to stem the flow of needless death with their thoughts and prayers, the foes of gun control are out of ideas. Every conceivable solution has been tried. The only option now is to give up.

“It’s a horrible, horrible situation. And we’re not going to fix it,” Tennessee Congressman Tim Burchett concluded in the wake of Monday’s attack at Covenant Church School, which left six victims dead, three of them children.

“Criminals are going to be criminals. My daddy fought in the Second World War in the Pacific, fought the Japanese, and he told me, ‘Buddy, if somebody wants to take you out and doesn’t mind losing their life, there’s not a whole heck of a lot you can do about it.’”

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